The Atari 2600 is the first video game console most people think of, when someone brings up classic video games. It was extremely influential, and lasted the longest out of all games systems to date. (causing Neo Geo AES to be second - darn!).

For this project, I've used batari Basic. It's a nice Basic compiler, which absolves the programmer from having to spend an absurd amount of time learning the assembly language for the 6507 processor, which is used by the 2600.

Writing a game in Basic took me back to my ZX Spectrum days, and it was great! The goal of the game is to get as many men across Snappy's pit as possible. Each game starts with ten men, and each of them gets parachuted at a random spot, so you have to time your jumps well. Only one button is used - fire. It will start a new game when on the menu screen, and it will cause a man to start running, trying to make it across the pit.

I liked Basic's "prototype" feel. It's really easy to try out new graphics, and tweak game code. I've written comments, but let's be honest here - it's Basic! The language itself was meant to be extremely readable, so the code should be quite easy to understand.

In terms of technical aspects, player 0 is your current man, player 1 is Snappy. The vine is part of the background. The vine sounds are always output via voice 0. All other sounds that may be heard at the same time as the never-halting vine are output via voice 1.

Snappy is getting hungry, so don't keep him waiting!

Downloads

The gamerom - get this to play Snappy on an Atari 2600 emulator
source code - get this to compile Snappy yourself

Dev kitdev kit - the batari Basic dev kit includes everything you need to program and test your roms. It comes with the source code for a few samples, and for Snappy. You can use these to experiment and learn. They are found in the source subdirectory. All makefiles assume this will be unzipped to C:\

EmulatorStella emulator - Stella is the best Atari 2600 emulator around, and it can run Snappy, as well as other Atari 2600 roms

Screenshots

Here is the cartridge version of Snappy!

And here is the cartridge running on real Atari 2600 hardware!

If you use the materials on this page, or any other page on this web site, you do so at your own risk. They are provided "as is". No warranty is provided or implied. I neither guarantee that the materials will work, nor that they will not be harmful in any way.